Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

EESA Scientists Collaborate With Universities to bring Environmental Science Research Opportunities and Training to Students Underrepresented in STEM

January 13, 2023

Illustration of a globe against a blue gradient background, with three hands of different skin tones holding up magnifying glasses to the planet, evoking the study of earth sciences

EESA researchers are collaborators in three of the 41 projects awarded in December by DOE through its Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative. RENEW aims to build foundations for research at institutions that have been historically underrepresented in the Office of Science (SC) research portfolio. The initiative provides opportunities for undergraduate and…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

A Q&A With Postdoc Kunxiaoja Yuan

January 4, 2023

Kunxiaojia Yuan received her Bachelor’s of Engineering in remote sensing and Ph.D. in geographic information engineering from Wuhan University. She is a postdoctoral researcher in EESA, with a research focus on global carbon, energy, and water cycle analysis and model evaluation using machine learning and causal inference. What motivated you to pursue a postdoc…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division Ecology Department

A Q&A With Postdoc Brandon Enalls

January 4, 2023

After flipping on the TV to a science channel segment about environmental microbes, postdoc researcher Brandon Enalls was instantly amazed by microbiology. After working with a research group that studied microbes in extreme salinity, like the Dead Sea, Enalls knew he wanted to study microbes “in strange places, doing strange things,” inspiring him to get…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

Study Demonstrates the Importance of Data Management When Downscaling

December 12, 2022

Global climate models can help show the planet’s future, but what if you want to zoom in on an individual spot on the map? To get more local information, climate scientists commonly use an approach called downscaling to make global data relevant to an individual area. Downscaling relies, in part, on comparing the observed historical…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

Strengthening FAIRer Earth and Environmental Systems Science Data with Community-led Reporting Formats

November 14, 2022

Earth and environmental systems science (ESS) research is evidence-based and relies on the analysis and modeling of diverse and multi-scale datasets. The volume of ESS data has risen sharply in recent years, with more data gathered by the minute. This may come as positive news—however, much of this data remains unarchived, difficult to access, and…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

Register for the 2022 ESS-DIVE Community Data Workshop to Advance Environmental System Science through Collaborative Data Management

October 26, 2022

From the climate crisis to water insecurity, high-quality, openly available data are needed to solve global environmental challenges. However, important environmental systems science (ESS) data often remains difficult to access, unarchived, or even unusable. To help improve access to and use of ESS data, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) supported the establishment of the…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

Neslihan Tas Honored with WD&E Award for Outstanding Mentoring

October 26, 2022

Congratulations to Research Scientist Neslihan Taş for receiving a 2021 Outstanding Mentor award from Berkeley Lab Workforce Development & Education. This award recognizes those who go above and beyond to teach aspiring STEM professionals. Taş received the award for the Fall 2021 mentor term but is a regular advocate for mentees and the mentoring…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

EESA Scientists Develop New Model to Study Watershed Flow and Chemical Transport

September 27, 2022

Extreme weather, floods, drought, and land-use change are impacting nutrient, element, and water cycling within mountainous watersheds that provide 60-90 percent of the world’s freshwater. Changes in precipitation and snowmelt influence the quantity and timing of water in streams and rivers. However, these changes can also affect water quality because they affect the fate and…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

EESA Scientists Model Watershed Response to Future Climate Extremes

August 30, 2022

California has the fifth largest economy in the world and is home to one of the largest agricultural regions in the United States. However, the state’s water resources are extremely vulnerable to climate change–in part because much of historical precipitation falls at or near the freezing line, so that small increases in temperature will have…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

Nature Editorial Calls for Getting a Grip on Forest Science–Now

August 25, 2022

Through its leadership of the NGEE-Tropics project, EESA and partners around the world are exploring how tropical ecosystems are changing in response to climate and land-use change. This type of leadership, according to an August 16 editorial in Nature, is more important than ever. Dense tropical forests cover only about 8% of Earth’s land…